Pekka Halonen

Biography

In the spring of 1893 Halonen came to his native Lapinlahti, and in early May there was still snow on the ground. He painted his father and two other men at a campfire in the forest. The picture is called “By the Log Fire” (Tukkinuotiolla). At about that time he learned that he had been awarded a state grant of three thousand marks, a very large sum for those days.

He was born on 23 September 1865 in Lapinlahti, in eastern Finland, then the Grand Duchy of Finland. His father, Olli Halonen, was a farmer and craftsman who took on decorative work in churches and made gravestones; his mother played the violin and the kantele, and Pekka learned the kantele from her. His cousins Emil and Arttu Halonen became sculptors.

In 1885 he entered the teachers’ seminary in Jyväskylä, but he found its strict rules intolerable and left for Helsinki, to an acquaintance, the architect Josef Stenbäck. His decision to become an artist was firm. The autumn went on preparation, and he earned money on building sites and by decorative painting. From 1886 he studied at the drawing school of the Finnish Art Society, which from 1888 occupied the new Ateneum building, and he was among the first students there. Teaching was in Swedish, so he had to learn the language. His earnings were not enough, and to continue his studies he requested a certificate of poverty from his home parish. He graduated in 1890 with excellent marks and a scholarship of 200 marks.

In the autumn of 1890 Halonen went to Paris, to the Académie Julian. In the summer of 1891 he painted “The Haymakers” (Niittomiehet), for which his brother Antti posed; the picture was shown that autumn in an exhibition. He spent the winter in Paris again, and in the spring of 1892, on the way home, he met his future wife, Maija Mäkinen. Her parents did not like him, and he went to Ruskeala, where he painted “Oijustie” and “The Kantele Player”. In 1892 he was admitted to the Finnish Art Society.

In 1893 Halonen went to Paris once more, together with the painter Väinö Blomstedt. They first studied at the Académie Colarossi, but soon moved to Paul Gauguin, who had just returned from Tahiti. Halonen became acquainted with Symbolism and Synthetism but did not give up his realist manner; to my mind, what he took most from Gauguin was the handling of colour. He also took up Japanese woodcuts and bought several.

In July 1894 he returned home, and in 1895 he married Maija Mäkinen; they had eight children.

Life in his home parish did not work out: a sketch for an altarpiece for the local church turned his neighbours against him, and the state grant provoked envy, and many did not regard him as a real artist. After a few weeks the family left. That summer they travelled from Karelia to Kainuu and met the young poet Eino Leino, who became Halonen’s friend. At Paltamo he painted “Maidens by the River” (Neiet niemien nenissä), after the fortieth rune of the “Kalevala”; by his own account he was inspired by a choral work by Jean Sibelius. The canvas was shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, where “At the Ice Hole” (Avannolla) and one more of his works were also in the Finnish pavilion.

In May 1899 Halonen bought a plot on Lake Tuusula, and in 1902 a house with a studio, Halosenniemi, designed by the artist himself and his brother Antti, was completed there. He joined the circle of artists around Lake Tuusula. There he painted “Winter Evening Glow” (Talvinen iltarusko), “Hay Loads” and “Young Pines under Snow”. In 1899 he completed the altarpiece “The Crucified” for the church in Mikkeli. He worked quickly, often without sketches, and brought a canvas to completion outdoors. In the early 1900s he experimented with colour, and in 1915–1916 his palette became more restrained and he returned to traditional landscape. He admired Millet and Bastien-Lepage, and the elongated vertical formats and asymmetrical compositions point to an interest in Japanese art.

In 1925 he completed “Log Floating” (Tukinuitto), a mural commissioned by the Finnish government for the building of the International Labour Organization, part of the League of Nations, in Geneva. That same year he was given the title of professor. Halonen died at home on 1 December 1933, at Halosenniemi in Tuusula, and was buried in the cemetery of Tuusula Church. The house is now a museum.